Mystery of Crimple Valley noises solved

Mysterious ‘metallic’ noises going bump in the night have left residents near Hornbeam Park scratching their heads.

For weeks residents have reported mysterious noises keeping them awake at night and now Network Rail have admitted that their emergency repair work has been causing the noise.

Katie Davill said: “Every night for the past couple of weeks I’ve been woken up by a banging sound coming from Hornbeam Park or the showground direction. It starts at 1.30am 2am every night and must be a machine because it’s a consistent noise, like a metronome. It also sounds fairly metallic. Anyone have any ideas? It’s very annoying.”

A Network Rail spokesperson said it has not had the opportunity to inform nearby residents that work was set to begin as it needed to be done urgently.

He said:“We are currently carrying out emergency repair work to Crimple Viaduct.

“This work has to be carried out during the night when trains are not running and has involved piling work which we acknowledge has been loud. Due to this being an emergency repair, we have not hit the high standards we expect when it comes to informing residents living nearby about the disruption prior to work starting and we would like to apologise to all those impacted.”

They added: “The final night of piling work was on Wednesday June 17 and while work will continue at Crimple Viaduct for a further two weeks we anticipate that any noise disruption will be significantly reduced after this time.”